84 M. Humboldt on the Great Cavern of the Guachavo. 
The cavern, which the natives call a mine of fat^ is not in 
the valley of Caripe itself, but at three short leagues distance 
from the convent, towards the west-south-west. It opens into a 
lateral valley, which terminates at the Sierra del Guacharo. We 
set out toward the Sierra on the 18th of September, accompa- 
nied by the Alcaids, or Indian magistrates, and the greater part 
of the monks of the Convent. A narrow path led us at first 
during an hour and a half toward the south, across a fine plain, 
covered with a beautiful turf. We then turned toward the 
west, along a small river, which issues from the mouth of the 
cavern. We ascended during three quarters of ap hour, walk- 
ing sometimes in the water, which was shallow, sometimes be- 
tween the torrent and a wall of rocks, on a soil extremely slip- 
pery and miry. The falling down of the earth, the scattered 
trunks of trees over which the mules could scarcely pass, and the 
creeping plants that covered the ground, rendered this part of 
the road fatiguing. 
At the foot of the lofty mountain of Guacharo, we were 
only four hundred steps from the cavern, without yet perceiving 
the entrance. The torrent runs in a crevice, which has been 
hollowed out by the waters ; and we went on under a cornice, 
the projection of which prevented us from seeing the sky. The 
path winds like the river : at the last turning we came suddenly 
before the immense opening of the grotto. The aspect of this 
spot is majestic even to the eye of a traveller accustomed to the 
picturesque scenes of the higher Alps. I had before this seen 
the caverns of the Peak of Derbyshire, where, extended in a 
boat, we traversed a subterranean river, under a vault of two feet 
high. I had visited the beautiful grotto of Treshemienshiz, in \ 
the Carpathian Mountains, the caverns of the Hartz, and those 
of Franconia, which are vast cemeteries of bones of tygers, 
hyenas, and bears, as large as our horses. Nature in every zone 
follows immutable laws in the distribution of rocks, in the exte- 
* The mould, that has covered for thousands of years the soil of the caverns of 
Gaylenreuth and Muggendorf in Franconia, emits even now choke-damps, or ga- 
seous mixtures of hydrogen and nitrogen, that rise to the roof of these caves. This 
fact is known to all those who shew these caverns to travellers ; and when I had 
the direction of the mines of the Fichtelberg, I observed it frequently in the sum- 
•» ler time. 
